A/N: I wrote this within a day with very little editing. I guess bad anxiety and insomnia make great muses for writing. Sorry for any typos. No beta as I rushed to write this. Post IWTB before the separation in season 10. P.S. Smutish if not smutlight. Just a heads up.
Scully was not one to let her anxiety or nerves show.
As a child, she kept her emotions inward and was a private person. In college and med school, she kept her head down to excel at the top of her class. At the FBI academy, she stood head to head with her male cohort and continued to excel with her own merits. At Quantico, no one questioned Dr. Scully. It wasn’t until Mulder that something changed in her. At first, she tried to show him that she was no spy and she was more than capable. But things evolved and shifted and she was his equal. She was simply Scully and she found her emotional armor chinked away over the years. She could finally be herself with him. Years in the field battling alien conspiracies, years on the run, and years living together had not changed them. So she thought.
Ever since Mulder regained his freedom after they helped the FBI, Scully began to see him less and less. A part of her was happy that he was no longer a prisoner but another part of her envied him. It was as if him being a fugitive was the only thing that kept him from running off and forgetting about her.
There it was. That feeling of being left behind. That anxiety that had been growing over the past month that she was struggling to keep hidden away. It gnawed at her and ached like an insufferable pain that could not be cured. She found herself waking more and more in the night. Mulder’s insomnia had somehow transmitted to her once he regained his freedom and she began to feel trapped. Work no longer held the same enjoyment it once did. She started to come back to an empty home with Mulder finally chasing down leads and meeting the contacts from his MUFON forums in person down in Richmond.
When Scully was first assigned to be his partner, it took months to keep him from running off without her. Now, sixteen years later, it was happening all over again.
Despite all this, everything imploded after tonight. She came home to an empty house that evening after a disastrous dinner at her mother’s house. Bill announced in anger over Tara shouting at him, Matthew trying to hush his younger siblings, that Bill was being transferred to Germany to get away from all the family BS. His words, not hers. Charlie and his wife were shouting right back. Maggie Scully caught hopelessly in the middle trying to placate her feuding sons. And that left Dana Scully, somehow silently caught up in the family fight, alone (because Mulder was elsewhere), listening to the random barb dropped in regards to her life choices. Her mother watched helplessly as her sons and their families left in a whirlwind and the sad smile Maggie Scully gave her remaining daughter, wishing her a good evening and not to worry. That night just made her feel even more alone.
By the time she drove back to Virginia, Mulder’s truck was still missing in the driveway. Their house was eerily silent. And that was what caused the dam to break. The ache in her chest, the anxiety that made her want to claw at her skin, came out with silent tears.
She climbed the old wooden steps, the third step from the top creaking loudly, as she ascended to disappear into their bedroom. She thought about maybe taking a bath but decided it was too much effort. Instead, she changed into a large t-shirt and soft cotton pajama pants and crawled into their bed. Scully pulled a frayed cotton quilt around her like a cocoon and just let herself cry.
A physician in the 18th century would have diagnosed her was pangs in the chest. Pangs. Suffering. To be sorrowful. Was she said.? Or was it the anxiety? She balled her fists, her nails digging into the palms of her hands, as she tried to force herself to breathe. This was not something Dana Scully did. Her rational mind recognized the signs of an anxiety attack but she was also angry and hurt. Why did she feel this way? What the hell was causing it? She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, her heart drumming in her ears, and counted silently to four. She tried to ease her breath out slowly but it came out too quickly.
She couldn’t breathe. In a last-ditch effort, she hugged a pillow to her chest and willed herself to steady her breath. This didn’t happen to her. She didn’t panic. She didn’t have anxiety. She was stronger than that.
When she opened her eyes, Scully didn’t know how much time had passed when she heard the downstairs door slam shut and Mulder’s voice calling for her. Did she fall asleep? How much time had passed? Was it already night?
Scully willed herself to move, to get out of bed, and pretend everything was a-okay. That’s what Mulder expected. That is what the rest of the world expected. But her body rebelled and she stayed right in bed. She could hear his heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. That loud third step from the top sounded like an alarm.
Panic.
Fear.
Pretend you're asleep, she thought.
“Scully?” His voice was soft. “You awake?” She didn’t respond, trying to keep the ruse going. But something must’ve given it away. “Scully, have you been crying?” Another pause. “I know you aren’t asleep.”
“Fine,” she muttered, twisting her back to him.
“That doesn’t sound like your regular fine. How was your mother’s?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Typically that was enough and he would leave her alone but not this time. She felt the bed dip and he sat on his side so he could look at her. Scully huffed and turned her back to him so she faced the window. “You’re cute when you are angry but it’s painful to see you hurting.”
“I’m not hurting.”
“You know, once upon a time, I used to a profiler at the FBI and they used to pay me to do this work,” Mulder joked.
“Stop profiling me then.”
“It was a joke. Scully, look at me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Mulder traced her cheek and she closed her eyes, feeling fresh tears. He gently peeled back the blanket and traced her arm. “Nothing’s wrong.” She bawled her fist again in frustration. “Mulder, please. I’m fine.”
He ignored her and pried open her fist to take her hand. Like a small child, she tried to pull away. “This isn’t you,” he whispered. “Scully, what is it? Tell me what’s wrong.”
She shook her head defiantly. He took a deep breath and curled up behind her and drew the old quilt she had been using around them. “We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” he whispered. “We can just lay here.”
At that moment, whether it was just the sensation of Mulder surrounding her, not being alone, or both, she cried harder. He pressed his hand to her chest over her heart. “I’m here. Scully, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me. What happened at your mother’s tonight? Is it work? Is it something else? More than once you pulled me together, let me return the favor, but I can’t if you don’t tell me.”
One of the longest minutes of her life passed before she answered. “No, I’m not okay, Mulder.”
“Tell me.”
“Work. My family. Us. Me. Everything.”
She wished the bed would open up to a hole to China so that she could fall into it. Maybe from China, she could travel to Australia and live a different life. “Everything,” he repeated.
“Everything.”
He took a deep breath and her anxiety dissipated slightly feeling him around her, safe and secure. “Well,” he sighed. “Let’s begin with your mother’s dinner.”
She laughed bitterly. “A clusterfuck. I don’t even remember what the argument was about. Charlie and his wife stormed off. Bill started yelling as Tara stood by terrified. He’s getting transferred to Germany. And me? It was like I didn’t even exist.”
He nuzzled behind her ear. “I don’t know about that but I’m sure it’s going to be okay.”
“I don’t think so,” she whispered.
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I don’t know anymore, Mulder.”
“Okay. What about work?”
She shrugged weakly. “Okay. The thing I have avoided: us.”
“It’s nothing, Mulder.”
“It’s something to cause whatever this is,” he whispered.
In the silence, they lay together. Scully closed her eyes trying to memorize the sensations of being held by him and just feeling safe for a moment. “Do you remember at the beginning of our partnership? When you tried to always run off without me?”
“I didn’t trust you then,” he whispered. “But yes, I remember.”
“It feels like that again.”
Scully’s confession striked him as odd. He rubbed her arms and kissed her again. “What do you mean?”
“It sounds selfish.”
“Try me.”
She shifted and turned to face him. “When you were home,” she started, “well, still a fugitive...I always knew you would be here. Maybe I am being selfish but I miss knowing you are going to be here when I get home. When I come home, the house is empty. Lonely. We talk but we don’t talk. Does that make sense? It feels like we are living two separate lives. You are running off without me.”
“I thought you wanted to keep the darkness out of our life.”
“Not at the expense of losing you, Mulder.”
He closed his eyes and bent his forehead to rest against hers. “If I could take away this anxiety and pain that you have, I would in a heartbeat. You aren’t going to lose me. It’s going to be okay. You have to trust me.”
“You know what I miss most of all, Mulder? This. Just this moment with us.” She sighed as if a great pain had been relieved as he began to run his hand up and down her arm, over her face, and then under her shirt. She closed her eyes. “At the end of the day, it’s just us against the world.”
“Hasn’t it always been like that, Scully?” He rolled her gently onto her back and kissed her gently. “You’re starting to relax.”
She closed her eyes despite herself. “You were always the best drug. But this feels like a band-aid at best. I’m still scared. I am worried.”
“Don’t be. We have a life together.”
“Do we?” She opened her eyes and blinked lazily. “Mulder?”
“It seems we both need a reminder.”
Scully relished his touch as he pulled her shirt above her head and began to kiss her breast bone. She relaxed into the pillows and closed her eyes praying that nothing would take him again from her. The anxiety she had festering for the past month vanished under his lips and she shivered. “Mulder,” she murmured.
Her fingers raked through his hair slowly as he found her lips again and, unrushed, enjoyed his ministrations. This was something that a couple did after many years of being together. Unrushed and unhurried, they relished their closeness. For once, their unspoken communication reigned supreme and she pushed against him. Scully felt her anxiety falling away.
“This isn’t a band-aid,” he whispered between kisses. “This is real.” His hand snaked downwards and she became jelly under him. “All this is real. If the world feels like it is shattering around us, we’ll still have us, Scully.”
Scully found it odd that her body felt so ready after so little. Her anxiety must've run her down to nothing. “Shirt off,” she ordered softly.
He arched his bag as she tore off his shirt with practiced ease. Skin against skin, they sighed in contentment. “All or nothing, Scully.”
What an odd turn of events, she thought. A simple reunion of their bodies and spirits and all was well. Was that how it worked? As she let her thoughts drift, Mulder stripped away the remains of their clothes. With a few quick strokes, he entered and joined her. Any doubt and anxiety Scully had left evaporated in a fiery death as she hugged him close and wrapped her legs around his waist. It did not take much as both cried out in unison and sheer emotion ebbed away. He held her close and continued to kiss her leisurely. “You don’t have to be Atlas, Scully. Let me be your Heracles and carry the weight of the world for a while.”
Scully smiled. She let her anxiety go and decided, yet again, to just enjoy the moment. It may be just a band-aid but Mulder was the best drug. “Love you,” she whispered sleepily.
“We’ll be okay, Scully. Just you see.”
Mulder’s voice was heavy with sleep. Emotionally exhausted, she let herself forget and sleep as he kissed her lovingly and whispered they were forever.
